John Lott Fires Back at Critics of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Defending 2A

Saying that gun rights are civil rights shouldn’t be controversial. After all, most of what we term as civil liberties are enshrined in the Bill of Rights, from freedom of speech and religion to protection against illegal search and seizure, and many others. The Second Amendment is smack dab in the middle of all of those. Saying the right to keep and bear arms is a civil right isn’t controversial; it’s obvious.

But some people can’t seem to wrap their gray matter around that.

Among them are some critics of the Department of Justice actually treating gun rights like civil rights, and John Lott has some words for those folks.

“The Civil Rights Division’s new focus on the Second Amendment, which is far outside its longstanding mission, is moving us even further away from our nation’s commitment to protecting all Americans’ civil rights,” said Stacey Young, a former division attorney who resigned shortly after the current administration took office.

The investigation into Los Angeles’ reluctance to grant concealed-carry permits has already drawn sharp criticism. “This is a gross misuse of the government’s civil rights enforcement authority,” said Christy Lopez, who served as deputy chief of the division under the Obama administration.

But poor black Americans — who face the highest risk of violent crime — gain the most from having the ability to protect themselves.

For women, the safest response when confronted by a criminal is to have a gun. Women who rely on passive behavior are 2.5 times more likely to suffer serious injury than women who use a firearm to defend themselves. Because criminals are overwhelmingly men, a woman attacked by a man faces a much larger strength imbalance than a man attacked by another man. A gun dramatically shifts that balance. It increases a woman’s ability to protect herself far more than it does for a man.

Background Check Errors Mostly Affect Blacks, Hispanics

Consider something as seemingly uncontroversial as background checks for gun purchases. Gun-control advocates often claim that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) has stopped 5.1 million dangerous or prohibited people from buying guns since 1998. But more than 99 percent of these denials are false positives, and the errors fall disproportionately on law-abiding black and Hispanic men.

The impact of gun laws in general falls disproportionately on black and Hispanic men, even. And, in a world where people see disparity of outcomes as proof of racism, then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate all gun control laws.

Granted, I’m not someone who ascribes to that personally. I think it can be evidence of racism, but it’s not always. At least not directly, anyway.

But the truth is that gun control doesn’t affect the wealthy, white people living in their little gated communities nearly as harshly as it does in poorer black and Hispanic neighborhoods. These are where gangs try to rule, where theft and violence is just a way of life, and where people feel like they have no avenues to turn to.

Gun rights give them the power to hold firm against the worst of the worst. It gives them the ability to protect what’s theirs, including their family, in an area that bears more than a passing resemblance to third-world hellholes that none of us want anything to do with.

Gun control, on the contrary, disempowers them. 

Let’s consider, for a moment, what some popular gun control measures mean for poorer communities, which are disproportionately black or Hispanic.

Training requirements are a popular one, either for a carry permit or for a permit to purchase–we’ll get to those in a moment–and it sounds good to a lot of people. I mean, why not make sure people who have or carry guns know how to use them correctly and effectively?

The problem is that training requirements mean someone has to pay for a trainer. They might be charitable men or women, but running classes takes time and money on their part, and they can’t be expected to do it for free. Not all the time, anyway. So how do these people who can barely afford a firearm supposed to also pay for training?

Especially since the training may well take place outside of their community, beyond where public transportation goes? There aren’t a ton of inner-city gun ranges, after all, in part because cities aren’t fond of allowing them to open up.

Then we have all the permits that everyone on the anti-gun side seems to be in love with.

Each permit mandate adds a cost to gun ownership. Every single time someone says, “It’s only $40” or whatever, that’s $40 or whatever added to the cost of the gun, ammunition, the training you’ve already said they needed before they can get that license, and by the time it’s all said and one, you’re looking at a poor black or Hispanic man or woman needing to spend hundreds of dollars on a cheap $150 gun that’s not super reliable, but was all they could afford.

Luckily for those anti-gun folks, they can’t afford it now. The cost has ballooned up to $500 or something, and they just can’t afford to exercise their rights lawfully, which is why some decide to say “screw it!” and just break the law.

Every gun control law comes with some kind of cost, and it’s never the wealthy who are truly bearing that cost.

So yeah, gun rights are civil rights, and they’re civil rights that are often being denied to black and Hispanic Americans because they’re not wealthy enough to jump through the hoops.

Rights aren’t for the rich. They’re for every American.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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